


Gift Horse

by NiceHatGeorgia



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s02e04 The Gamekeeper, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24274261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiceHatGeorgia/pseuds/NiceHatGeorgia
Summary: “Go where? Where would you like to go? I can take you anywhere you can remember, anywhere you can imagine.” - the Keeper
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Comments: 161
Kudos: 159





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (You all remember this episode, right? Hiding in early season 2, after we meet Jolinar but before we meet Jacob? Gamekeeper keeps SG-1 strapped into pods and makes them relive bad memories to amuse other residents of the planet, also trapped in pods? Yeah, it was a weird one.)
> 
> Thanks to sharim28 for the beta and for inspiring me with her awesome writing.

“We’re out,” Daniel says. 

Jack opens his eyes cautiously and sees blue sky, green foliage and cheery, tropical flowers everywhere. Gone are the Keeper and his creepy friends in black robes. SG-1 is back in the garden where it all began. Jack hops out of his stasis pod before it can strap him back in; the rest of his team does the same.

“Wait,” Carter says. “Didn’t that seem just a little too easy?”

“Yes it did,” Jack agrees. “Let’s go home.” He’s never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. And he really, really wants to get the hell away from this planet and their freaky mind games. 

\--

They step through the gate at the SGC, and Hammond is there to greet them, along with a squadron of armed guards.

“You’re twelve hours late for your check-in, SG-1. Report.”

Jack opens his mouth to do just that, but Carter speaks first. “Twelve hours late, sir? You mean we’ve been on that planet for over a day?”

“Yes you have,” Hammond replies. “Mind telling me what you’ve been up to?”

“Wow,” Daniel says, more to Carter than to the General. “It really didn’t feel like that long.” Carter shakes her head and Daniel takes off his glasses and rubs them with his shirt, as if that might somehow clear up this time discrepancy.

“We were in this garden… place. We got stuck in some kind of… alternate…” Jack tries.

“ _Virtual_ ,” Carter corrects him, though Jack doesn’t exactly get why that distinction matters. “A virtual reality, sir. A very advanced technology we’ve never encountered before.”

Hammond considers them carefully and flexes his hands open and closed. Jack has seen him do this many times before; he’s trying to decide if he should trust their crazy story or put them all in cuffs before this gets out of hand. “Alright. We’ll debrief in one hour. But I want all of you to report directly to the infirmary for a thorough evaluation.” SG-1 retreats through the blast doors and Hammond motions for the SFs to follow them.

Frasier’s findings seem to support SG-1’s story about the garden and the pods and the virtual reality things, and she says as much to the General later on at their debriefing. 

“So we’re fine,” Jack says. “We can just cross that planet off our list and never go back there again and I can go home.” Go home, have a beer, forget about Kawalsky and Michaels and East Germany and that goddamn Keeper guy.

“What I don’t understand,” Carter says, ignoring him completely, “is why it felt like we were there for only a few hours, when in reality it was more than a day.” 

“Maybe we were unconscious for an extended period of time before they got the simulations up and running,” Daniel suggests. “The Keeper did say he could access anything we can remember or imagine. That’s a lot of data, no matter how advanced their technology.”

“Or,” Hammond says, “perhaps these machines you described are able to manipulate your sense of the passage of time.”

Jack frowns; it’s unlike Hammond to posit answers to Carter’s technical questions. Carter looks a little surprised too, but she nods thoughtfully at the General. “I suppose that’s possible.” 

“At any rate, I think the most important thing is for you all to go home and get some rest following your ordeal,” Hammond says, and Jack agrees wholeheartedly. “Teal’c, Daniel, you’re dismissed. Colonel O’Neill and Captain Carter, I’d like a brief word.”

Jack exchanges a glance with Carter as the other half of their team departs, along with Dr. Frasier. Carter tilts her head a bit, _do you know what’s going on?_ He returns a small shrug, _not a clue._

Once they’re alone, Hammond produces two large stacks of paper and puts one in front of each of them. The top sheet reads “United States Air Force Procedures and Regulations: Cheyenne Mountain Pilot Project.” Jack grimaces. Paperwork.

“There was a base-wide briefing for all military personnel while you were on PJ7-989,” Hammond explains. “I’m sorry you missed it, and I'd like to get you both up to speed. The Air Force is piloting an updated set of regulations at a small number of bases, and ours has been selected.”

“Updated?” Jack can’t imagine this will be a good thing. He really doesn’t want to have to do the buzz cut thing again. “Updated how?”

“The Air Force wants to be able to attract and retain the best and brightest talent,” Hammond replies. “In recent years, we’ve struggled to do so. My superiors have decided it’s worth testing out new ways of operating, with the goal of boosting morale and minimizing turnover. Take a look.”

Jack starts flipping through the pages in front of him. More vacation time. Donuts every day instead of just on Fridays. Alcohol will now be permitted in private on-base quarters, and in designated recreation areas—another new feature.

“No more post-mission medical evaluations?” Carter says. “Are you sure that’s wise?” Jack tries to kick her under the table. That’s his favorite update so far.

Hammond nods. “Frankly, Captain, the measures we’ve implemented here are insufficient against the Goa’uld, as your recent encounter with the Tok’ra Jolinar has shown us. You submitted to a medical evaluation and we detected nothing.” That’s right, Jolinar. Jack feels a little bad for trying to kick her. “Instead, everyone who returns through the gate will undergo a 1-hour obsevation period, most likely in the new rec room on level 26.”

“... which will be stocked with beer and pizza,” Jack adds, reading from the papers in front of him. He flips to the next page. “Dogs? We’re getting team dogs?”

“Not every team,” Hammond says. “A few to start, and if the program is successful, we’ll phase them onto most teams. We think a canine unit could be a real asset in our line of work.”

Jack could not agree more, but Carter still looks skeptical. “Why us?” she says. “Why here?”

“Captain, the vast majority of what goes on at this base is already top secret,” Hammond says with a chuckle. The same thought has occurred to Jack before. What’s the point of keeping up appearances when no one knows the SGC exists in the first place? “This will be just one more secret for us to keep until the Air Force decides whether or not to institute such changes across the board.”

Carter nods cautiously and looks down at the papers in front of her again. She turns to the last one. “Fraternization regulations?”

“We’re suspending them,” Hammond says. “A different kind of team-building is required in this unique environment, and we don’t know yet what that will look like. So for the time being, we’re going to allow military personnel to fraternize in whatever way feels most appropriate to them, and see how it impacts team dynamics.”

“Oh,” Carter says.

“Now if there are no further questions at this time, you’re both dismissed.” Hammond stands up, and Jack and Carter do the same. “It’s late. Go home and rest. You folks have earned it.”

Hammond heads for his office and Jack and Carter collect their papers. “Who would have thought today would end on such a high note?” he says. It was a real shit mission, but this is one hell of a silver lining.

Carter sighs as she walks through the door. “I don’t know, sir. Doesn’t it seem kind of… suspicious?”

“Hm,” Jack replies. “Like someone broke into my house and stole my Christmas wish list?”

Carter ducks her chin, but he can see that she’s smiling at his lame joke. “It’s just... after everything on that planet, I don’t know. It feels strange to come back to such big changes.”

“Maybe,” he admits. Yes, these are big changes, but they’re changes that make a lot of sense to him. This is a far cry from reliving one of your worst nightmares from over a decade in the past. “But surely you must know how I feel about gift horses and their mouths.”

She allows a small laugh at this. “I never understood that saying,” she says. “What’s a gift horse?”

“Ah!” Jack says, holding up a finger. “You’re overthinking. Stop.”

“Yes, sir,” she grins.


	2. Chapter 2

Half an hour later, Jack is unlocking his door at home when his phone starts to ring. It’s Carter.

“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you,” she starts. Her voice cracks a little, putting Jack on high alert. “There’s been an accident. A fire. My house… it’s… gone.”

Shit. “I’m on my way,” he says.

“Thank you, sir. I called Daniel but he didn’t answer, and I —”

“Carter,” Jack says. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

Carter’s street is cordoned off; Jack has to park his truck a block up. He jogs the rest of the way. Carter is standing next to a fire truck, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Across the street, her house is a smoldering pile of rubble. 

“They said it took them five hours to get the blaze under control,” she says to him, her eyes not leaving the place where her house once stood. “It wasn’t even a big house. I don’t know how it could burn that long. They still don’t know what happened...”

Carter trails off, and Jack surveys the wreckage along with her. He really can’t think of anything constructive to say. It occurs to him that he’s never actually been inside Carter’s house, he’s only dropped her off a few times. He has no idea what it used to look like on the inside.

“I just keep thinking…” she says. “I keep thinking that if we hadn’t gotten stuck on that planet, maybe I would’ve been home, and maybe I could’ve done something...”

“Or maybe there’s nothing you could’ve done, and we should be thankful you weren’t anywhere near that house when this fire started.”

She turns and looks at him then, and he can see how hard she’s working to maintain a calm facade. 

“Come on,” he says. “You don’t need to stand around for this.” It’s obvious there’s nothing left to salvage from the rubble. The fire department will write up a report and she can get a copy later for her insurance claims. 

“I’m going to head back to base,” she says, biting her lip.

“No you’re not.” Jack takes her arm and guides her over to where he parked his truck. She climbs in when he opens the door and doesn’t protest when he starts driving back to his house.

Once home, he parks her on the couch and fetches two glasses and a bottle of bourbon from the kitchen. He hands her a glass, pours them each a generous measure, and then throws his back. She does the same. He pours them each a refill and sits back against the couch.

Jack thinks maybe she wants to talk, and he wonders if he should say something to help get things started. It was his idea to drag her over here and start giving her alcohol, after all. But nothing that comes to mind feels remotely helpful. _Sorry about your house?_ No. _How are you doing with all this?_ No way.

After some deliberation, he decides to go with, “This really sucks.” 

She nods, throws back her second drink, and rubs a hand against her forehead. 

“You, uh, wanna talk about it?” he tries.

“Not really, sir.”

Yeah, he probably should’ve stuck to the drinking.

“I just… I kind of feel like hitting something, you know?” The look in her eyes is half embarrassed, half hopeful that he’ll understand.

He definitely understands. “Come on,” he says. She pours herself a third drink and follows him out the front door and around to the side of the house. Jack ducks into the garage and grabs a hockey stick, net, and a box of pucks. Once he’s got the net set up, he hands her the stick.

From the way she grasps it, it’s clear she’s never played hockey before. So he stands behind her and helps position her hands so she can whack the hell out of the hockey puck in the most satisfying manner possible.

“Just like that,” he says. “You just bring it back,” he pulls her arms back, the hockey stick reaching far behind them, “and swing it forward.” He steps back to let her take her swing. Her movement is graceful and her body is strong but her aim is terrible. She makes contact with the puck and sends it flying into his garage door with incredible force. He’s pretty sure there’s going to be a dent.

“That felt good,” she says. She grabs another puck from the box.

Many hours and several garage door dents later, Sam and Jack are sitting on his driveway. Once she’d taken out enough of her frustration on his hockey pucks, he taught her some of the finer points of street hockey, such as he’d played it back in the day. It’s a lesser form of hockey, in his mind, but easier than the kind of hockey you play on ice, and still a great way to blow off steam.

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to ice skate,” Jack says, taking another sip of his drink. They’d switched to beers at some point, a decision Jack is sure he’ll be thankful for in the morning. 

“It never came up,” she says. She’s leaning back on her elbows, looking up at the sky. She’s got a thin layer of sweat from all the running around they’ve been doing, and there’s a smile on her face. Jack hopes that means he’s doing what he needs to be doing for her right now.

Jack shakes his head. “You gotta understand, in Minnesota, everyone plays hockey. Kids start hockey lessons before they start kindergarten.” She laughs some more. “I’m serious,” he insists.

“Never skated,” she says. “Never played most sports. The only thing I’m good at is pool.”

“Pool?” Jack sputters. “Like on a table, with the balls, and the sticks?”

Sam points her beer at him and nods. “Yes. Cues. But yes.”

“That’s not a sport.” 

“Says who?” She sits up a little bit and glares at him.

“Says _athletes_ ,” he replies.

“Maybe not,” she says. “But consider yourself officially challenged to a game. I promise I will kick your ass.” And then she adds, “Sir,” with a burst of laughter that makes Jack wonder how drunk she is. He’s just glad she’s not worrying about her destroyed house right now. But he feels obligated to check his watch.

“Crap,” he says. “It’s really late.”

Sam checks her watch too, and her eyes go wide. “Oh my god, it’s almost 2 a.m.” And right on cue, she yawns widely, stretching her arms above her head.

Jack stands and grabs one of her outstretched hands, pulling her up along with him. Standing up makes him realize just how far past tipsy he is too. “There’s a guest room —” he starts to say, but she shakes her head.

“I like the couch,” she says. “And I don’t know if I’d make it to your guest room right now.”

As if to emphasize her point, she sways a bit. Jack puts a hand on the small of her back and she leans into him. He’s definitely feeling it, this buzz of stress and adrenaline and a whole lot of alcohol on an empty stomach. Did they not eat dinner? He should’ve ordered a pizza or something. Maybe for breakfast. Pizza sounds good.

He tells himself that his own fuzzy head is the reason why he keeps his hand on her for their whole walk back to the living room. Or maybe it’s because he wants her to know she’s not alone right now. Or maybe it’s because —

He leaves her on the couch and barely remembers walking the rest of the way to his bedroom alone.

\--

The next morning, Jack wakes up with a headache that feels just about right for the amount of alcohol he thinks he probably had the night before. There’s a very strong pot of coffee on in the kitchen, and out on the deck sits Carter, wearing a pair of his sunglasses and clutching a mug.

He pours himself some coffee, steps out onto the deck, and squints against the blinding light. “Sir,” she says. “You want your sunglasses?”

“Nah,” he replies. She probably needs them more than he does. It doesn’t escape his notice that she looks really good sitting on his deck in his sunglasses.

“Sorry I got so drunk,” she says.

“Don’t worry about it, Carter,” he replies. “That was kind of the point.” She needed to blow off some steam, and he was happy to help facilitate. 

“Yeah,” she says. She takes off the sunglasses and squints, then stands to hand them to him, arm stretching out at the exact same moment that Jack takes a step forward to sit in the chair next to her. Her arm collides with his—the one that’s holding a hot cup of coffee—and spills it all over him.

Jack jumps back and pulls his now very hot shirt away from his chest with the hand not holding an empty mug. “Oh my god,” Sam says. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” She sets the sunglasses down on her chair and reaches awkwardly for his shirt, then pulls back. “Can I… get you a new shirt?”

“New cup of coffee, maybe,” Jack says, handing her his empty mug. He heads back inside to change his clothes and when he returns, she’s looking sheepish with two fresh cups of coffee and one neatly folded pair of sunglasses sitting on the table next to her.

Jack takes a seat, more cautiously this time. “You know,” he says after a while, “Daniel stayed here for a few weeks after he got back from Abydos.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He had quarters on base, but that’s no way to live, you know?”

Sam scoffs and looks down at her coffee in a way that makes Jack wonder if she’s using her own base quarters more than he would likely approve.

“What I’m saying is, you don’t have to stay on base or live in a hotel until you find a new place.” 

She’s quiet for long moments, staring into her strong coffee, until finally, she says, “Sir, I couldn’t possibly put you out like that.” 

“It’s no trouble,” he says, and he means it. He lets her think on that while he finishes his coffee. He doesn’t mention how much he likes having other living beings in his house, how much he hates coming home to nothing and no one, how even Daniel was an improvement on his solitude. He gently pushes down thoughts of how much he likes spending time with her specifically, and how somewhere in an alternate reality, an alternate him and an alternate her were probably sharing a lot more than a house.

He is very aware, however, that he would not be able to make such an offer if the frat regs were still in place. Even putting Daniel up was pushing the envelope, but Daniel didn’t have a military career for Jack to tarnish. With Carter, the stakes are that much higher. Except now, they aren’t.

“Even after I just spilled a whole cup of hot coffee down your shirt?”

Jack chuckles. “I’ll let it slide this once.”

“Thanks,” she says finally. “I’ll think about it, sir.” 

“Ok,” he says. “But for cryin’ out loud, would you stop calling me ‘sir’ when you’re hungover on my deck?”

She laughs and rolls her eyes. “Ok,” she says. “Deal.” 


	3. Chapter 3

  
By the end of the week, Carter decides to take him up on his offer. She has no possessions to speak of anymore, so Jack puts clean sheets on the bed in the guest room and tells her to make herself comfortable. She spends her first evening as his new resident eating pizza and watching reruns of last season’s hockey games on the couch with him. She declines his offer for a beer, but she also doesn’t call him ‘sir’ one single time. Jack thinks this just might work out.

As the days turn into weeks, living with her turns out to be better than Jack could have imagined. She’s neat and quiet but present, sharing his space without intruding on it. She seems to genuinely enjoy his sense of humor, and more than that, he’s pleased to discover that she’s really quite funny herself, a balanced combination of whip smart and totally cheesy. He wonders how much of that wit she’s been keeping to herself at work.

Most mornings now, he wakes up to a pot of coffee already brewing, and Sam on his deck in a tank top and sweats, staring off into the sky. He thinks he could really get used to it. As for Sam, she doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to find her own place.

\---

“Did you guys hear about SG-6?” Daniel asks over a lukewarm plate of chicken stew at lunch one day.

“Yeah,” Carter says. “Good for them.” 

“What?” Jack says, looking around. “Who?”

“Stepman and Gantz,” Daniel says. “They got married.”

“That is most fortunate,” Teal’c says, and Jack agrees. It’s fortunate for everyone: now that the frat regs have been lifted, Captain Mel Stepman and Major Ryan Gantz can stop pretending they’re not in love, and everyone else can stop pretending they haven’t noticed.

But still. “Married?” Jack says.

“Mel was worried the Air Force would suspend this experiment with the new rules, and she and Ryan would miss their chance,” Daniel explains. 

“Ah.” The two would likely be reassigned to separate teams if the old regulations were reinstated, but they wouldn’t be reprimanded. It makes a lot of sense, actually. “I guess when you know, you know,” he says. He tries not to glance at Carter. Across the table, he thinks he sees her try not to glance at him.

\---

He does wish he had a better sense of what she was thinking. Because he thinks he feels things, sometimes. Or he tries not to. Or maybe he just wonders. The frat regs may be suspended for the time being, but he’s still her boss, and she’s still basically homeless. He doesn’t want it to feel like he’s taking advantage. It’s just not a good time for him to make a move. 

Though he acknowledges that if the circumstances were different, he definitely would’ve made a move by now. 

There are times when he swears she’s feeling it too. Sometimes she looks at him like he’s more than just the grumpy old divorced co-worker she happens to be crashing with. Sometimes she sits closer to him on the couch than she needs to and their arms brush, and the spark is so real he thinks she must see it. Some nights they stay up playing chess or video games, or just talking, and she seems reluctant to go to bed, even when it’s late. Some mornings in the kitchen they end up in accidentally close proximity and she seems to catch her breath. But it’s so hard to know for sure.

One evening, he pokes his head into her room where she’s typing away furiously on her laptop. “Hey,” he says. “The whole point of not living on base is that you’re supposed to stop working at some point.” She does a lot less of this than he’d thought she would, but he still likes to make a point to raz her about it whenever she does. “It’s a clear night and a new moon. I was going to head up to the roof and see what I can see.” 

He holds up two beers and a bag of chips, and all of a sudden it feels like he’s asking her on a date. Maybe it’s the late hour, maybe it’s the flutter of nerves and hope that’s unexpectedly taken hold of him, maybe it’s the look on her face as she considers what he’s said.

“Is that an invitation?” she asks, and Jack can’t tell if she’s trying to flirt or if it just happened to come out that way.

“I’m willing to share,” he replies with a smile he knows must look dorky, but he can’t seem to help himself. For some reason he’s become very invested in getting her to say yes.

Her eyes flit between his face and his snacks. “Sounds like fun.” 

She follows him up the ladder to the tiny deck on top of his roof. The small space is the primary reason why he doesn’t usually take people up here, even though it’s undeniably the coolest thing about his house. With her, though, he doesn’t mind the tight quarters.

He fiddles with the knobs and dials on his telescope and soon finds Saturn, bright and low in the night sky. It’s not exactly an impressive note to start on, but the rings are fun to look at. He and Sam take turns at the eyepiece, finding Jupiter and its moons next, then the Orion nebula. They’re standing so close they’re almost touching, not quite. He can feel the pull of her like gravity, like she’s the moon and he’s the ocean. He wishes he could know if she feels it too.

She spends quite a while looking at the Andromeda galaxy, and once she straightens up, she sighs. “Do you think we’ll ever get there?”

She turns to face him, her eyes full of wonder and maybe something else. He loves this look on her, and he can’t help but reply, “I think we could do anything.”

The flutter that had taken root in him earlier feels more like a drumbeat now, thrumming somewhere deep inside, low and steady. Involuntarily, he licks his lower lip, trying to figure out his next move. Her gaze snaps to his mouth and then back up to his eyes, and he wonders if she’s thinking about kissing him, because he’s very much thinking about kissing her. It would be so easy to lean just a little bit forward and find out.

Then she takes a small step back, and Jack works hard to hold in his sigh. “Do you think you can find the Triangulum galaxy too?” she asks.

“Sure,” he says, turning back to the telescope. Whatever she’s feeling for him, it’s becoming harder than ever for him to ignore what he feels for her.

\---

Sam says she wants to buy a new house, but the market’s not great and she doesn’t have a lot of time for house hunting. She spends almost a month living in Jack’s guest room before she settles on a month-to-month apartment not far from the base. She uses insurance money to order a bunch of generic furniture that arrives in one big pile outside of her new place one Saturday morning. Jack spends the day helping her get everything set up and assembled and arranged. All that’s missing now are the piles of everyday crap that make a house feel like a home, but Jack has faith that she’ll get there soon.

She’s smiling as she brushes her hands together and assesses the small living room and kitchen. She looks happy. He’s glad she’s got her own place again, really, he is. And yet…

“Looks good,” he says. 

“Yeah.” She turns her smile on him. “Though I’ll admit, I’m going to miss your deck.”

Jack nods. He’ll miss her missing his deck, come to think of it. He’ll miss a lot of things. 

“Hey,” she says, grabbing her purse, “let’s go get something to eat. My treat.” Jack hesitates, but she touches his arm to steer him toward the door with her. “I want to thank you. For everything.” 

“You don’t have to thank me, Carter,” he says. For all that she’s lost in the last month, it feels like the least he could do to give her a place to crash and help assemble some furniture.

“I know,” she smiles at him again and he knows that resisting would be a lost cause. 

They find a pub a couple blocks away, where they each get a burger and a beer, and share an order of onion rings. For all the time they’ve been spending together recently, they haven’t done much of it in public. Jack is aware that not so long ago, going out to a restaurant with his female subordinate—laughing and talking and casually touching like they’re doing—would’ve felt improprietous. Or worse. But now, well, it just feels good. It feels really good.

The server brings their bill and starts handing it to Jack, but Sam intercepts, and Jack lets her. 

“This was fun,” he says, once she’s stuck her credit card in the little pocket and handed the bill back to the server.

Sam smiles again, and Jack feels a flutter in his stomach that has nothing to do with the second order of onion rings. It’s a sensation he’s starting to get used to when he’s around her. 

“We should do it again,” she replies.

“Yeah. My treat next time, maybe.”

Sam smiles a little and looks down at her hands before meeting his gaze again. “Sounds good,” she says.

“Ok. Next Friday?”

“Friday works for me.”

The server is back with their receipt, and Sam stands to leave. Jack does the same. And he just can’t help himself, he has to know for sure: “We are talking about a date, right?”

Sam laughs. “Yeah. We’re talking about a date.”


	4. Chapter 4

He takes her to a nice steak restaurant downtown, the kind of restaurant that leaves no room for doubt as to whether this is, in fact, a date. He’s pleased when she actually orders a steak instead of a ceasar salad or something dumb like that.

When their meal is done, they step out of the restaurant, and Jack looks around. He doesn’t want the night to be over yet. “Well —” he starts to say, but he’s interrupted by Sam’s lips on his. It’s a brief kiss, soft and light but full of promise. Jack blinks back at her when she pulls away.

“Thanks for dinner,” she says with a smile.

Then she takes his hand and leads him down the block and across the street to a bar with a pool table in the back. She pulls a cue off the rack and looks at him with a glint in her eye. “How do you want to do this? Should I wipe the floor with you? Or would you rather watch while I wipe the floor with some other guy?” The bar is fairly crowded and Sam has definitely turned a few heads just by walking in. He’s sure she wouldn’t have trouble finding someone else hoping to try his luck. Still.

“I’m in,” he says, grabbing a cue of his own. 

Jack spends the next ten minutes wondering why it feels so good to lose so badly. There’s something about the way she leans over the table and slides the pool cue through her fingers, presenting him at different times with different but equally fantastic views of her body. By now, more people are watching, and he should be embarrassed, really, he should. But mostly he just can’t believe that she’s here with him. He’s on a date—an honest-to-goodness date—with the most amazing woman he’s ever met. These other people in this bar don’t even know the half of it.

“So,” she says when the game is done. She’s standing awfully close, hand still firmly gripping her pool cue, and she looks more than a little pleased with herself. Inexplicably, Jack feels pleased with himself too. “What do you say?”

Jack leans in a little bit. He can smell her shampoo and he really, really wants to kiss her again. He wants to do more than kiss her. “Still not a sport,” he says. He wonders if it would be too forward to invite her over. For a drink. Or something. It’s been a while since he’s wondered about first date etiquette. But it’s not like she’s never been to his house before.

She tips her chin up, like she knows exactly what’s going on inside his head right now. “You want a rematch?” she asks, “Or were you going to invite me back to your place for a drink?”

Jack is impressed. “I had thought of that.”

She kisses him again in the parking lot, deeper this time, his hands finding their way to her hair as hers wander his sides and back. Only after they break apart does he realize that he doesn’t see her familiar Volvo anywhere in the lot. 

“Where’s your car?” he asks.

She grins. “I took a cab.” 

She spends the ride to his house with a hand on his leg and Jack grips the steering wheel and does his damndest to focus on the road. Luckily, the streets are quiet, and the drive is quick.

They’re hardly two steps in the door when Sam starts kissing him again, with the same single-mindedness that characterizes everything she does. Her hands make quick work of his shirt, and the buckle of his belt, and when she pulls her dress off over her head, Jack wants to pinch himself. He just can’t believe this is real.

It’s over an hour before they finally get around to that drink he promised. She’s sitting in his bed wearing nothing but one of his old t-shirts, effortlessly sexy, the soft light of the lamp warm on her long, bare legs. He sits down next to her and hands her a beer, letting his own bare leg rest against hers. 

“I can’t believe we slept together on our first date,” she says.

“Oh,” Jack replies, “this wasn’t our first date.”

“It wasn’t?”

“There was that time on the roof, when we were looking at the stars.”

“That wasn’t a date,” she laughs.

“No?” Jack says. “Ok, well, there was that time we had coffee out on the deck and you spilled on me.” 

She laughs louder this time. “That was _definitely_ not a date.”

“Hm,” Jack says. “There was that party on 446 where they had that —”

“Hey!” Sam says, turning to him and poking a finger in his chest. “I thought we all agreed to pretend _that_ never happened.”

Jack grins and takes her hand, lacing their fingers together. She settles back against the headboard next to him, and they drink their beers in silence for another minute.

“I really think that time on the roof might have been a date,” he says. 

“Yeah,” she leans her head against his shoulder, “you might be right.” 

\--

They come clean with the guys right away. Or, Jack does. He thought it would be best if he talked to them on his own, so they wouldn’t feel ganged up on or something.

But Daniel and Teal’c seem pleased at the development. Tickled, even.

“That’s great,” Daniel smiles.

“Indeed,” Teal’c nods. “My felicitations.” 

“Well thanks,” Jack says. “I’m not gunning for a pat on the back here though. I wanted to make sure you guys were ok with this, and I wanted to assure you that nothing’s going to change with how we operate as—” 

“Jack,” Daniel says, “there’s nothing to worry about. Really.”

Teal’c nods again and adds, “It seems a most reasonable course of action, given the new regulations and your obvious affection for one another.”

Jack sits back in his chair a bit. “Obvious affection, huh?”

Daniel snickers.

“I just don’t want this to be weird,” Jack says. 

“Think of it this way,” Daniel offers. “How much weirder would it be for me and Teal’c if you and Sam wanted to be together but couldn’t?”

Well. That is a point.

As the weeks wear on, it’s not just Daniel and Teal’c who are supportive. It seems like the whole base is pleased with Sam and Jack’s developing relationship. Jack had feared they might face a backlash, even with the new regulations. He’d also worried that the incessant curiosity of everyone else at the SGC about a love affair between the two military officers on SG-1 would drive him and Sam crazy, or apart, or something. But people are giving them space. Daniel seems as tied up as ever in the kind of stuff that he always gets tied up in, and Teal’c has, of all things, taken up golf. With the rest of SG-1 engrossed in their own activities and the rest of the base politely minding their own business, Sam and Jack are free to spend more and more time together. It’s convenient. It’s ideal. For once, everything seems to moving along without a hitch.

As for the work itself, it’s been kind of slow. One might even say it has been boring. Apophis is dead and the focus of their work has shifted, but even so Jack can’t help but notice the lack of chaos.

“Is it just me,” he asks his teammates over lunch one day, “or have our missions lately been kind of… easy?”

“Oh boy,” Sam says, sucking in a breath.

“I can’t believe you just said that out loud,” Daniel says. “I can’t believe you even thought it.”

Sure enough, their next mission is a big explosion of every crazy disaster Jack could possibly imagine. It starts with their boots dissolving in toxic mud right out of the gate and ends in them commandeering a unicorn-like creature from their would-be captors to escape through the gate as the sky rains down sticky black globs of something that smells like bubblegum.

“I blame you for this,” Sam says, picking globs off her jacket as they walk down the ramp at the SGC.

“Indeed,” Teal’c agrees, frowning. “You failed to strike a tree.”

“I think you mean _knock_ on _wood_ ,” Jack says. He looks to Daniel for support, but Daniel just shakes his head. 

“I’m with Teal’c on this one,” Daniel says. “The failed part, at least.”

\---

Work goes back to the boring side of normal after that, though now that Jack’s personal life is getting more and more interesting, he doesn’t exactly care.

It’s another two months before something cracks. In retrospect, Jack thinks he should’ve expected it much sooner. 

The scenario is pretty typical for SG-1: they’re doing recon on a planet with old ruins that happen to yield cool tech. But their way back to the gate becomes compromised by a previously undetected local population. As they plan their escape, Jack tells Daniel to forget the ruins, and he tells Carter to leave the tech behind.

Daniel scoffs and fusses and then comes around, like he always does. But Carter, out of nowhere, digs in.

“I know it’s shiny and special and all that,” Jack says, “I heard you when you said it might be a game-changer. But no games will change if we can’t get back through that gate alive and there’s _no way_ we’ll make it carrying that 50 pound rock.”

“It’s not a rock!” she shoots back, her voice raised. “It’s a composite of—”

“I don’t care what it’s made of,” Jack says. “We’ll come back for it on a quieter day. Right now, we’re leaving.” 

But Carter is scowling at him in a way that makes him deeply regret ever getting on her bad side. 

“Just because we’re sleeping together doesn’t mean you can be so dismissive of me.”

Teal’c raises both eyebrows, and Daniel takes a step backward and lets out a low whistle. Sam holds Jack’s gaze, defiant, and he sees a flash of the woman who, not so long ago, challenged him to arm wrestle. She’s posturing, he realizes. She’s picking a fight because she’s got something she wants him to know.

Just then, there’s a loud explosion from outside the cavern where they’ve taken shelter. Carter flinches. This is their window.

“We move out now,” he says. It’ll take the natives another two minutes to reload their rudimentary but effective long-range weapon. “We stick to the plan.” He holds Carter’s gaze until she drops it and looks down at her feet. “On my mark.” 

They scurry to the gate and make it through just in the nick of time. They’ll send in another team or two next week after things have died down. They’ll try some diplomacy, offer items for trade. They won’t wrongly assume the planet is uninhabited. They’ll get Carter her not-a-rock thing. She’s got to know that.

SG-1’s post-mission rec room observation period drags on, and the second their hour is up, Daniel and Teal’c mutter their excuses and skedaddle. Either they respect the fact that Sam and Jack need to talk right now, or they really, really didn’t like having to think about them sleeping together. Maybe both.

“Carter, what the hell was that?” Jack says, once they’re alone in the quiet room.

Sam sighs and tucks her hands under her legs.

“You know it was the right call,” Jack presses. “And even if it wasn’t the right call, you know it was _my_ call to make.”

She frowns, but Jack can see that the fight has drained from her.

“What’s going on?” he asks softly.

Sam sits for a long moment before taking a deep breath to reply. “Do you ever just find yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

Jack frowns, and involuntarily looks down at his shoes. “No?”

“This isn’t supposed to work,” she says. “You and me. This is supposed to be a big mess.” She closes her eyes briefly and shakes her head. “For as long as women have been in the armed forces, the men in charge have been telling them —have been telling _me_ —that everything will go to hell if I sleep with my CO. And it’s hard to just… just let that go.”

“So…” Jack can see the pieces falling into place. “You got sick of waiting for all this to blow up in your face, and you tried to blow it up yourself instead.”

Sam gives a humorless laugh and looks down at her lap. “Something like that.” 

They sit quietly for long moments on their separate chairs in the rec room, and as time stretches on, Jack begins to feel nervous again. It’s one thing to figure out the problem, but another thing to find the solution.

“We’ll get your rock,” he says. “I promise.”

At that, Sam rises from her chair and comes to sit on his, facing him, and takes his hands in hers. “I know you will,” she says. “You’ve been so… Jack, this has all been so perfect. Sometimes I just can’t believe it’s real.”

Jack takes a deep breath and decides to speak from his heart. “It’s real, Sam. For me, this is real.” He wants to say more, there are specific things he wants to say, but he thinks this might not be the right time. So he gives her hands a squeeze and hopes she understands.

Sam nods and squeezes back. “For me too,” she says. She holds his gaze and his heart melts a little. It’s real but it’s also pretty unbelievable. “Can you take me home now?”

Jack can’t think of anything he’d rather do. That said, it _is_ his duty as team leader to make sure all of SG-1 is ok after their altercation on the planet, and he’s not thinking of the altercation with the locals. “Do you think we should check in on Daniel and Teal’c first?”

Sam grimaces as she stands up from the chair and reaches out to take his hand again. “Oh, I think they’d rather not hear from us right now.” 

This time, Jack completely agrees with her.


	5. Chapter 5

And so they continue, spending their days together, and their nights, more often than not. With the extra vacation time they now have under the new regulations, it’s not hard to find a week or two here and there to get away to the cabin, and Sam falls in love with it as completely as Jack hoped she would. They sit on the dock, Jack’s chair on the left and Sam’s on the right, gazing out at the fishless pond together. Jack feels a depth of contentment when they’re at the cabin that he hadn’t thought he’d feel again.

After six more months, Sam gives up the pretense of searching for a permanent house. She sells or donates most of the new, generic furniture she’d bought after the fire, and moves in with Jack permanently. 

They’re drinking coffee on the deck one morning, the bright sun just starting to find its way over the trees, when Jack finally decides to say what’s been on his mind. “Do you ever think about getting married?”

Sam freezes, her coffee mug hanging just above the table.

“In general, or to you specifically?”

Jack shrugs, trying to appear casual. “Take your pick.”

Sam nods to herself, still looking down at her coffee. “Yeah. To both.” 

“Oh.” Jack swallows. She’s thought about getting married. To him. “And… so… when you think about it, what do you think?” He maybe should’ve planned this out a little better. 

Sam sets her mug down and turns to face him. “I’ve been thinking that would be pretty nice.”

Jack blinks. Even after all this time, he still can’t quite believe that Sam Carter would choose to be with him, to date him and love him and move in with him. And now she’s just said…

“How about you?” she asks. She clears her throat.

“I want to marry you, Sam,” he says.

\---

They take Friday off work and go to the courthouse. That night, they invite Daniel, Teal’c, and a bunch of other people from the SGC over for steaks. Everyone seems surprised but delighted at the news. The whole base has been nothing but supportive of him and Sam. He’s glad they can all be here now to help them celebrate. 

“I still can’t believe you didn’t invite us to the wedding,” Daniel says, between bites of cake.

Jack rolls his eyes but grins. “There was no cake at the courthouse, Daniel,” he points out. “You should be thanking me.”

Daniel rolls his eyes back. “Still, that was quick,” he says. “Is Sam pregnant or something?”

\---

It’s Jack who brings up the idea of having kids. It takes a while, over a year into their marriage, before he realizes that maybe she’s not sure how to broach the subject. It’s not that they don’t ever talk about Charlie; they do. But they don’t ever talk about whether it means anything for them now.

Sam looks first taken aback, then relieved, when he brings it up one lazy Sunday afternoon. “I’ve been thinking about it too,” she admits.

“I just want you to know that if it’s something you want, then we could do it. We could give it a try,” he says. 

Sam nods and bites her lip. He would be happy either way, as long as he gets to be with her. But it’s crossed his mind more than once that they would make a great parenting team. And he knows she loves kids as much as he does.

“Let’s give it a try,” she grins.

\---

It should come as no surprise to Jack that Sam approaches getting pregnant with the same intense focus with which she approaches everything else. She’s flawlessly methodical, and Jack, for his part, is not complaining.

They’re tied to a stake in the middle of a medieval town square on a mission where everything went wrong, and Sam is antsy. “We need to get off this planet,” she says. The townspeople confiscated SG-1’s weapons, but they missed the knife Carter had strapped to her ankle. She’s shimmied it up her leg and is holding it now, poised and ready to cut herself, Jack, and Teal’c free.

“Easy, Captain,” he warns. “Let Daniel do his thing.” Daniel, who’s standing twenty yards away and gesturing dramatically to a group of town elders, is trying the diplomatic route. There’s no question they could fight their way out of this, but Jack is doing his best to avoid that option.

“We need to get home and have sex right now,” she says.

“Daniel!” Jack shouts across the town square. “Two more minutes!”

Teal’c, to his credit, does not react at all.

\---

They’re leaning against the counter in the bathroom, staring at a little white oval on the plastic stick Sam is clutching. Two lines, you’re pregnant; one line, you try again next month.

“Why am I so nervous?” Sam says. She shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling. “This is crazy. It’s just a pregnancy test.” 

Jack puts his arm around her shoulders. Waiting has never been her strong suit, even if it’s just a two-minute wait. She likes to be doing, not sitting still.

“It’ll be fine,” Jack says. No matter what this little stick tells them, no matter what happens next, Jack knows they’ll be fine. He _knows_ it in his bones. Together, he thinks, they could handle anything. This pregnancy test is no match for them. “No matter what,” he adds for good measure.

Sam lifts her head and gives him a weak smile, her eyes a mix of nerves and hope and love. 

Just then, the room around them blinks and vanishes. Gone is the counter, the bathroom, the little plastic stick with the oval. He’s in a pod, in a garden - an eerily familiar garden. Blue sky, green foliage and cheery, tropical flowers everywhere you look. He drops his head into his hands.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Sam scrambling out of the pod next to his. His mind also registers Daniel and Teal’c, and sure enough, there’s the Keeper. 

They’ve been on P7J-989. All this time.


	6. Chapter 6

“Thank god,” Daniel says, rushing forward to help Sam, as Teal’c offers an arm to Jack. “That took forever.” 

“Forever?” Jack says. He stands up and looks over at Sam, whose eyes are wide. Was it really her in there? Or was that all part of the simulation too? He feels the color drain from his face at the thought. “How long have we been in there?” he manages.

“Five days,” Teal’c responds.

“Days?” Sam gapes, and Teal’c nods. Jack can’t help the flash of relief he feels at how shocked she looks. Maybe it really was her. Though he doesn’t know if that would make it better or worse, all things considered.

“We got out after three,” Daniel says, “but it took a really long time to extract you guys.”

“As I said,” the Gamekeeper scurries to comment, “they were both _very_ committed to the simulation.”

“Five days,” Jack hears Sam whisper. She closes her eyes and presses her lips together. Jack thinks she’s trying not to cry. He knows the feeling. It’s all he can do to keep it together right now, as much as he feels like he’s being torn apart.

Daniel frowns. “Why? How long did it feel like to you?”

Jack takes a deep breath. “Years,” he says. “It was two years.”

“Wow,” Daniel says. “Two years. What were you guys doing for two years?”

He should’ve known. He should’ve figured it out. The signs were everywhere, and in retrospect, he sees them all. The new regs. Her house burning down. Everyone was so accommodating and supportive of their relationship. Everything was too perfect. She was too perfect. And he was too goddamn happy to be suspicious. And now...

“Can you guys give us a minute?” he hears her say. He glances up at her and she’s lost her bewildered look. Her voice is calm, but behind her eyes there is fire.

“Sure,” Daniel says, looking concerned. “We’ll just go… dial up the gate.” He gestures toward the Stargate and he, Teal’c and the Keeper make their way toward the DHD. 

As soon as they’re out of earshot, Sam steps right into his personal space. “Snap out of it!” she hisses. He flinches as if she’d slapped him. It seems possible she still might.

“Excuse me?” he says. Why is he getting yelled at?

“I know that look,” she points at his face accusingly. “That’s a defeated look. Snap out of it.” 

He knows the look on her face too. She looks like she’s going into battle. Still. “You heard them,” he says. “It wasn’t real.” His eyes drift to the garden around them again. Those damn pods. “None of it —”

“Hey!” she says sharply, drawing his attention. “I was real. _This_. This was real.” She grabs his face and kisses him forcefully on the lips. “You are my husband and this is our marriage and nothing is going to change that.”

Jack feels himself nodding.

“Ok?” she asks.

“Ok.”

“Ok,” she repeats. Then she takes a deep breath and stands up straight. “Let’s do this.” She grabs his hand and drags him to join the others as the gate. 

\---

“What exactly were you doing during your time in the virtual reality simulators?” Hammond asks.

Daniel pushes his glasses up his nose and dives in. “Well it seems on our second simulation, the Keeper decided to play to the futures we could imagine rather than revisit the pasts we regretted. For me, this was Sha’re, of course. In the simulation Teal’c and I were in, the SGC decided to devote more of its time and resources to finding Sha’re, and we were slowly working through the list I’ve been building of planets where Amaunet might be hiding.”

“And you believed all of this to be true?” Hammond replies.

“Well, yeah,” Daniel says. “The Air Force realized that finding Amaunet might be the key to undermining what’s left of Apophis’s forces, which is exactly what I’ve been arguing for over a year now. Who knows what secrets Sha’re could tell us, if we could find her and bring her back…” He trails off and Jack feels a twinge of guilt for his failure to find Daniel’s wife after all this time.

Hammond narrows his eyes in thought. “How was it possible that you visited multiple planets in just three days’ time?” 

“It didn’t feel like three days to us,” Daniel replies. “A person’s experience of the passage of time in a simulation has nothing to do with real time. It felt like we were in there for a few weeks. The Keeper said he was hoping to bank enough content to keep the residents entertained for as long as possible.”

Oh. _Content_. Jack focuses on his hands, folded tightly on the table in front of him, and tries not to conjure up any images of the content the Keeper must now have of him and Sam. 

“Of course, we’ve demanded that the content be destroyed,” Daniel continues. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, now that the residents of the planet are out of their pods and experiencing their own lives again.” 

Content. Jack steals a glance at Sam, but she’s laser-focused on the General. Good.

“And what made you realize you were still in the simulation?” Hammond asks.

Daniel shrugs. “It was all too… predictable, I guess. Every planet we visited, every person we talked to. Nothing surprised me. I’m used to being surprised more often.” He looks across the table where Sam and Jack are sitting next to each other. “Their version of Sam never came up with any solutions I hadn’t already thought of, and their Jack was just kind of… cliche.”

Jack makes a face. “Ouch.”

“Well it wasn’t really you,” Daniel says. “Anyway, once we started getting suspicious and asking questions, the Keeper gave up the charade, and that’s when we started trying to find Sam and Jack.”

Hammond now turns his attention to the other half of SG-1. “What imagined future did the Keeper simulate for the two of you?” he asks.

Jack blinks. Next to him, Sam stiffens. “New rules,” he starts. “The Air Force. There were… more donuts and… team dogs.”

“We were married, sir,” Sam blurts out, and the room falls completely silent.

“Excuse me, captain?”

She swallows hard and continues. “The Air Force suspended regulations governing interpersonal relationships between officers,” she says, her voice strangely calm. “We dated for a while and got married. We’ve been together for over two years.”

The silence sits heavily on everyone in the briefing room. Sam looks like she’s strung so tight she might snap at any second, but she’s holding it together.

“Well that is… unexpected,” Hammond says finally. 

“We’re going to stay married, sir.” She sits up even straighter and Jack can’t quite believe she’s really doing this —putting her career and everything she’s worked for on the line—for them, for him.

“Captain, I’m sorry,” Hammond says, shaking his head, “but this is real life. I shouldn’t need to remind you that you and Colonel O’Neill cannot be in a relationship. It’s simply not possible.”

“Well we _are_ in a relationship,” she says. “We are in a _marriage_.” She stands abruptly and nearly knocks her chair over. “And if you can’t find a way to make that work, then you’re going to have to find a new SG-1.”

Jack spends half a second being too shocked to move before he stands up with her, shooting her a supportive nod. After another second, Teal’c stands too, and Daniel. Jack can’t help but feel touched. 

The general looks around the table, flabbergasted. “Well,” he says, “I guess I’ll see what I can do.”

\---

A month later, they step out of the truck at the cabin. Sam walks in slow, careful steps across the grass, her eyes taking in every detail.

“Well?” Jack asks. It’s her first time here, sort of.

Sam gives him a shrug. “It’s exactly how I remembered it.” 

Jack laughs at this. “Me too.” 

She walks over to the side of the house, grabs their two folding chairs from where they always rest, and carries them out to the end of the dock. There’s a whole truck to unload—they’ll be here for two weeks—but that can wait. This is more important. Wordlessly, they set up their chairs and take a seat, Jack on the left and Sam on the right, just like they’ve always done. The wind is blowing gently through the pine trees and the fireflies are just starting to blink.

“We owe the president a fruit basket,” Jack says.

Sam chuckles. “We owe _Hammond_ a fruit basket.”

That’s true enough. Jack’s not sure what strings Hammond had to pull to make all this happen, but in the end, he came through for them. And now here they are, still married, still on SG-1, and with two weeks’ vacation to boot.

“We might even owe that Keeper guy a fruit basket,” he adds.

“Oh my god,” Sam says. She slaps him on the arm gently, but then lays her head down on his shoulder.

“Or maybe a basket of poison ivy,” Jack muses. “Do they make those?”

It’s quiet as the sun sets on a peaceful Minnesota pond. “I wouldn’t change a thing though,” Sam says after a while, “You know what they say about gift horses.”

Jack does. 

He turns to place a kiss on her forehead, and she hums against his shoulder. For all the places he can remember, and all the places he can imagine, this is exactly where he wants to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed this little pile of fluff. Million thanks to sharim28 for spending time on the beta :-* even though she's busy with her own awesome fic. 
> 
> Now if only the rest of us could spend this quarantine time in pods watching Sam and Jack live out their fantasies....


End file.
